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The internet is seething over Amazon’s reported hardball tactics in negotiations with Hachette. Newspapers and blogs are filled with heated opinion pieces, decrying Amazon’s domination of the book business. Actual facts are thinner on the ground, however, and if history is any guide, we haven’t heard the full story. Here’s how it started. In a historical quirk of the trade, publishers and booksellers negotiate co-op deals at the same time as the general agreement to carry titles. (For those who don’t know, co-op is the industry term for preferred in-store placement, such as face-out instead of spine-out, position on end-caps, front tables, window displays, and so on.) At publishers’ insistence, the same practice has continued in the online and e-book world, namely Read More…

Fantasy author David Dalglish is a big name in the self-publishing world, but he’s on the cusp of something even bigger. His path wasn’t easy. When David uploaded his first book, way back in February 2010, he was working in Pizza Hut. The popularity of his books, and the speed with which he was able to publish them, meant that it didn’t take long before he was able to quit that job and write full-time. David’s stellar sales (over 350,000 books to date) led to big offers from major publishers. But he wasn’t able to accept any of them – until recently. David is here today to tell us more. Trust me when I say this is quite the story: Hi David, Read More…

Amazon made the first move in its latest wave of international expansion by finally throwing open the doors of its long-mooted Spanish site Amazon.es. Amazon’s eighth store outside the US (following Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and China), will stock the usual assortment of books, games, DVDs, appliances, and electronics, but neither the Kindle nor e-books, for which Spanish customers will continue to be re-directed to Amazon.com. Respected Spanish daily El Pais has a source which claims that an official Kindle Store – selling both the device and e-books (including local-language books) – will be open before the year is out (link in Spanish).

Apple became the world’s most valuable company for a brief period yesterday, overtaking Exxon whose value had dipped on the back of the depressed oil prices. Those two should continue to duke it out as Apple posts record results, and oil prices inevitably rise. However, Apple’s celebrations may have been short-lived as Amazon came up with a clever way to circumvent their rules on in-app purchases. Today, Amazon released the Kindle Cloud Reader. Essentially, this is a snazzy version of the Kindle reading app, but the key difference is that it’s browser-based. This means that iPad owners will be able to read books, and browse for new purchases, all in the same web-based program.

Apple became the world’s most valuable company for a brief period yesterday, overtaking Exxon whose value had dipped on the back of the depressed oil prices. Those two should continue to duke it out as Apple posts record results, and oil prices inevitably rise. However, Apple’s celebrations may have been short-lived as Amazon came up with a clever way to circumvent their rules on in-app purchases. Today, Amazon released the Kindle Cloud Reader. Essentially, this is a snazzy version of the Kindle reading app, but the key difference is that it’s browser-based. This means that iPad owners will be able to read books, and browse for new purchases, all in the same web-based program.

In trying to piece together a snapshot of the rapidly changing publishing landscape, we have taken a look at the challenges facing the traditional houses, the rise of the digital tide, how the price of a book breaks out, piracy, and the sudden ascension of the e-book to being the #1 selling format in the U.S. Today we are going to talk about the 800 Pound Gorilla.

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